^51 




AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED AT CAMP MADISON, 

ON THE 4tti OF JULY, 1843, 

BY HON. GEORGE ROBERTSON. 




Class r V r/- 



AN 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT CAMP MADISON, 



ON THE 



FOURTH OF JULY, 1843 



HON. GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



X 



'■'■ FRANKFORT: 
HODGES, TODD & PRUETT, Printers. 

1843. 



4 

more comprehensive and important. Feeling, as we this day 
r»ust, that we are standing on a narrow isthmus between the 
great oceans of the eventful past and of the still more eventful 
future, we instinctively glance backward on the one and forward 
on the other, and embrace, in the transient vision, a panorama of 
the pregnant present. Such contemplations are peculiarly ap- 
propriate and affecting ; and, when intelligent, must be profitable. 
Mixed with joy and sorrow — hope and fear — gratitude and re- 
gret — complacency and humiliation — they must help to exalt our 
minds and purify our hearts, awaken us to a proper sense of our 
duties and responsibilities, and, by inspiring more virtuous emo- 
tions and resolutions, make us wiser as individuals, and as citizens 
more useful. 

A bird's eye glance at Kentucky — physical, moral, and politi- 
cal — past, present, and prospective — may, and ought to, produce 
all those valuable results, as fruits of this day's commemoration. 
And if, in any degree, such should be the consequence, our assem- 
bling will have been neither barren nor vain ; and it will be good 
for us all that we were here. 

Time builds on the ruins itself has made. It destroys to renew 
and desolates to improve. A wise and benevolent Providence 
has thus marked its progress in the moral, as well as in the phys- 
ical, world. The tide which has borne past generations to the 
ocean of eternity, is hastening to the same doom the living mass 
now gliding downward to that shoreless and unfathomed reser- 
voir. But whilst the current, in its onward flow, sweeps away 
all that should perish, like the Nile, it refreshes every desert and 
fructifies every wild through which it rolls ; and, fertilizing one 
land with the spoils of another, it deposites in a succeeding age 
the best seeds matured by the sun and gathered by the toil of ages 
gone before. Asia has thus been made tributary to Africa and 
to the younger Europe, ancient to modern times, and the middle 
ages to the more hallowed days in which we ourselves live. One 
generation dies that another may live and take its place. The 
desolation of one country has been the renovation of another — the 
downfall of one system has been the ultimate establishment of a 
better — and the ruin of nations has been the birth or regeneration 
of others both wiser and happier. The stream of moral light, 
with a western destination from the beginning, has, in all its me- 
anderings, increased its volume, until, swoollen by the contribu- 



tions and enriched by thegleamings of ages, it has poured its flood 
on the cis-atlantic world. 

America is a living monument of these consoling truths. When, 
within man's memory, it was blessed with the first footsteps of 
modern civilization, the germs of inductive philosophy and ra- 
tional liberty and religion, which had then begun to grow in Eu- 
rope, but could there be only engrafted on the sapless trunks of 
feudal despotism and consecrated errors, were here transplanted 
into a virgin soil where they soon expanded into maturity and 
brought forth sound fruit unblasted by the decays and cankers of 
the old world. The seminal principles of sound philosophy, true 
liberty, and pure religion, sifted from the chaff and rectified by 
the experience of ages, were imported by our pilgrim ancestors 
to a land which seems to have been prepared by Providence for 
their successful development in the proper season for assuring to 
mankind an exalted destiny, at last, on earth. 

In less than 250 years from the first settlements at Jamestown 
and Plymouth, the temperate zone of North America already ex- 
hibits many signs that it is the promised land of civil liberty, and 
that the Anglo-Americans are the chosen depositories of principles 
and institutions destined to liberate and exalt the human race. 

But our own Kentucky is, itself alone, a colossal tower of God's 
benevolence and time's beneficence toman. Within three score 
years and ten — the short period allotted for all the works and 
enjoyments of a human being here below — this fair Common- 
wealth, now so blessed and distinguished, was a gloomy wilder- 
ness, the abode of wild beasts, and the hunting ground and battle 
field of the still more ferocious red men of the west. Its fertile 
soil was nnfurrowed by the plow, its gigantic forest untouched by 
the axe of civilized man. Within all its limits wild nature's soli- 
tude was unblessed by the voice of reason, religion or law — un- 
cheered by one spire to Heaven — by one hearth of domestic char- 
ity, or by the curling smoke of a solitary cottage. But, in the 
fulness of time, the red man was to be supplanted by the white — 
the scalping knife by the sword of Justice — the savage war cry 
by the church bells of christian temples — the panther and the 
buffaloe by domestic herds — and the wilderness was soon to bloom 
with all the beauty and fragrance of " the rose of Sharon and HI- 
ley of the valley. ^^ 

In 1774, the tide of civilization, moving westward from the 



Atlantic, approached the Alleghanies — the Anglo-Saxon race, des- 
tined to conquer and enlighten the earth, crossed the mountain 
barrier — and Finley, and Boone, and Harrod, and Logan, and 
Knox, and Whitley, and Kenton, hunters of Kentucky — came, 
and saw, and conquered. They brought with them the rifle, the 
axe, the plough, and THE BIBLE. And, thus armed, this van 
guard of their race led the forlorn hope of western civilization to 
victory and to fortune. The Indians fell by their rifles, the forest 
by their axes, and savage idols tumbled before God's holy Book — 
until the current of population, rolling on, wave by wave, in rapid 
succession, soon made Kentucky a rich and powerful State — the 
first born of the union of 17SS, and now, even now, unsurpassed 
by physical blessings and moral power — already the mother of 
younger Commonwealths in the great Valley of the Mississippi, 
and, in many respects, a fit exemplar to the nations of the whole 
earth. 

The birth and legal maturity of such a Commonwealth are 
surely worthy of public commemoration. As Kentuckians, we 
should make periodical offerings of thanksgiving to God and of 
gratitude to our pioneer fathers and mothers for our enviable al- 
lotments in this age of light and in this land of liberty, plenty, 
and hope. Every nation leaves, on its pathway behind, some 
lasting memorial which it should never forget or neglect — some 
green spots in the waste of the past, around which memory lin- 
gers with ennobling emotions. And to commemorate, with grate- 
ful hearts, great national events, either glorious or beneficent, is a 
double offering on the altar of patriotism and the altar of God. 
Few incidents in the history of nations have been more useful or 
can be more memorable than that of the first settlement of Ken- 
tucky by our own race — few have been more eventful — and not 
one exhibits more of romance or of those qualities and deeds 
deemed chivalrous and noble among men. And the adoption of 
Kentucky's organic law and her admission into the federo-na- 
tional union of Anglo-American States, constitute an appropriate 
episode to the thrilling epic of her Herculean infancy. Our own 
interests, duty to the generations that shall succeed us, and re- 
spect for tiie mem.ory of our illustrious predecessors — call Ken- 
tuckians, one and all, to the consecratien of an occasional day or 
days to the becoming celebration of those two most interesting 
events in our local history. And let these Kentuckiads — like the 



saturnalia of the Romans, the Passovers of the Jews, r.nd the 
Olympiads o{ ihe Greeks — be sacred seasons when all, of e very- 
rank and denomination, animated by the same pervading senti- 
ments and communing as one family, may refresh their patriot- 
ism, revive their mutual good will, fortify their civic virtues, and 
improve their social graces. 

This, my countrymen, is a monumental land. Modern, as it is, 
in authentic history, it is covered with monuments of a remote 
antiquity — memorials, not only of successive generations of long 
extinct vegetables and animals whose transformed relics fill and 
fertilize the earth beneath us, but also of a race or races of men as 
far advanced perhaps in knowledge and the arts of social life as 
their cotemporaries of Europe, Asia, or Africa; but of whose ori- 
gin, history, or doom, no tradition remains. It contains monu- 
ments also of more recent races less civilized, and by whom the 
more ancient and enlightened inhabitants may have been exter- 
minated or absorbed, as Southern Europe once was, and perhaps 
about the same time, by wandering tribes of Northern barbari- 
ans. But our fathers have covered it with monuments far more 
legible and enduring — monuments of heroism, of rapid civihza- 
tion, and of civil and religious liberty. It is itself a vast monu- 
ment. By its central position as the heart of North America — its 
stupendous cliffs and labyrinths — its genial climate — its unsur- 
passed fertility — its physical beauty and magnificence — its insti- 
tutions, its population, and its deeds — God has made it an ever- 
lasting monument as enduring as its own mountains and far more 
interesting than the Towers and Pyramids of the old world. And 
may we, of this generation, leave behind us memorials worthy of 
our country and our age. 

Sites of large cities of the Cyclopean style — fragments of brick 
structures — metallic utensils and coins — ruins of gigantic fortifi- 
cations, temples, and cemeteries — perfect petrifactions of human 
beings of the Caucasian form, with the accustomed habiliments 
of the civilized dead — all disinterred after a sleep of many centu- 
ries — prove, beyond dispute, that our continent was once the 
theatre of a crowded population resembling, and probably equal- 
ling, the most civilized of their cotemporaries of the transatlantic 
world. When or whence those buried and forgotten nations 
came to America we have no clue for determining with historic 
certainty. If, as may be probable, any of them were superior to 



the Itzacans — who, emigrating probably from the neighborhood 
of the Caspian sea, built Merico and Cusco — they may have been 
Carthagenians, Phaznicians, Phocians, or Etruscans — all of the 
Pelasgian race — or probably Danes; all of which nations navi- 
gated the Atlantic Ocean, and the last of whom had planted set- 
tlements in the New England States at least twelve centuries 
ago. Modern geology, which discloses the history of the earth 
and vegetation and irrational animals for thousands of years, is 
dumb as to our own race, of whom there is no fossil fragment in 
any of the stratifications of the globe. Nor, whilst it proves, be- 
yond question, that this whole continent was once covered by 
an ocean of water, does it intimate the origin, character, or des- 
tiny of the more enlightened people who lived on it after its 
emergence and long before the discovery of it by Cabot. 

Their tale is untold. Were it known, it would doubtless be 
interesting and eventful. Ages ago, Kentucky may have been 
the busy theatre of incidents and catastrophes in the drama of 
civil and social life, of which a Hesiod, a Homer, and Virgil might 
have sung with immortal melody. It is said that, when Alexan- 
der saw the hillocks supposed to contain the bones of Achilles and 
Patroclus, he sighed because he too had not, like them, a Homer 
to canonise his name. 

May not Kentucky, centuries back, have had its Achilles and 
Patroclus, and Hector, and Helen, and Troy — its Marathon, its 
Athens, its Delphi, and its Parnassus — its Theseus, its Solon, its 
Socrates, its Epaminondas, its Themistocles, its Demosthenes — 
its wars, its friendships, its loves, and its human woes? But of 
these no Homer sang, and all is now desolation and oblivion. 
Whilst we tread on the ruins of generations unknown, all that 
history tells of Kentucky's past may be embraced in the narrow 
span of one century. 

Long prior to the immigration of our ancestors, Kentucky had 
been depopulated, and, — covered with majestic forests and luxu- 
riant cane, — had become the hunting ground of various tribes of 
savages and the theatre of bloody conflicts between them. And, 
from those circumstances, it derived its name — Kantuckee, — in In- 
dian dialect being, "the dark and bloody ground." Though em- 
braced constructively within the chartered limits of Virginia un- 
der James's grant of 1609, yet it was also claimed by France — 
both England and France claiming a great portion of North Amer- 



ica by alleged prior discovery, which, according to the conven- 
tional law of Christendom, gave to a Christian nation dominion 
over any unchristian country which it first discovered. These 
conflicting claims of England and France not being adjusted un- 
til their treaty of 1763, the uncertainty of title, the remoteness of 
the territory, and the perils and privations incident to a coloniza- 
tion of it retarded its exploration and settlement until after that 
peace had been concluded. Some wandering Frenchmen, as well 
as Virginians, had occasionally had earlier glimpses of it, and 
made glowing reports of its fertility and beauty. But it remain- 
ed unappropriated by the hand of civilization until the year 1767, 
when George Washington, afterwards commander-in-chief and 
President of the United States, visited the Eastern portion of it, 
and, under the proclamation of '63, made two surveys, chiefly 
within its limits, on Sandy, in the name of John Fry, the Colonel 
of the regiment, of which, in the war of'53, he himself was Lieut. 
Colonel. These surveys, like every thing else attempted by Wash- 
ington, were perfectly made and reported, so that every line and 
corner have been easily identified. They were the first surveys 
ever made within the limits of our present state — and thus Wash- 
ington was one of the first "hunters of Kentucky." Finley and 
others, of North Carolina, having, in the same year of 1767, ex- 
plored the best northern portions of the territory, and returned 
with alluring accounts, Daniel Boone of the same state, the Nim- 
rod of the day, was induced to come and look at it for himself in 
1769. He was so charmed with the beauty and sublimity of its 
landscape, the melody and fragrance of its forests, and the variety 
and abundance of its wild game, as to linger in its solitudes, gen- 
erally alone, for two years. In 1770, in escaping from Indians 
who killed one of his brothers by his side on Boone's creek in the 
present county of Clarke, he lost his hunting knife, which was 
found in 1822, and is now in the historic cabinet at Washington 
city. In 1773-4, several surveys were made near "the falls," and 
on Elkhorn and the Kentucky river under the proclamation of 
'63. And, in the fiill of the year 1774, James Harrod of Monon- 
gehala, with about 60 others who were in "the battle of the point," 
built some cabins where Harrodsburgh now stands, and returned 
home with the intention of removing to them, which some of them 
did in the fall of 1775. Boone had come with his family as far as 
Holstein, was at Wataga in March 1775, and, having there as- 
2 



10 

sisted in negotiating tiie contract whereby tlie Cherokees, who 
claimed all the territory south of the Kentucky river, sold to Col. 
Henderson of North Carolina, their title thereto, he was employed 
by the purchaser to open the first Kentucky road — (from Cum- 
berland Gap to that river,) which being soon completed by blazing 
trees and calling the designated route a trace, he commenced, 
about the middle of April, 1775, the erection of a log fortification 
on the southern bank of the river, at a place since called Boonsbo- 
rough, and which was finished in June of the same year. Thus it 
is almost certain that, whilst the first revolutionary guns were 
thundering on the 19th of April, at Lexington, Massachusetts, in 
the cause of National Independence, the pioneer axe was resound- 
ing among the cliffs of Kentucky in the work of rearing the first 
modern fortress for founding and guarding civilization in this hes- 
perian wilderness. The fortress being completed, Boone removed 
to it with his wife and daughters early in September, 1775. — 
These were the first civilized females who ventured to settle in 
Kentucky. Without the co-operation of the gentler sex, the set- 
tlement would never have been made. Woman was the guardian 
angel of the wild and perilous forest. And never, on earth, was 
the poet's conception of her value more perfectly exemplified — 
for it was here truly seen and felt that — 

"The world was sad, the garden was a wild, 
"And man the iiZermti sighed, till woman smiled.''^ 

The anniversary of the first advent to Kentucky of Christian 
woman, by whom our State has since been so signally adorned 
and blessed, should itself be commemorated witii grateful hearts. 
She was the tutelar genius of our first settlements — She has been 
the foster mother of the domestic virtues which have hallowed 
our hearths and graced our society — and She it was that fired the 
heart of Kentucky patriotism and nerved the arm of Kentucky 
chivalry. 

In 1776 many improvements were made preparatory to ulti- 
mate residence, and of such a character as merely to identify the 
selected spots as those intended for occupancy and cultivation. — 
Until the year 1777 all this cis-montanian territory of Virginia 
was embraced in the county of Fincastle, and was virtually in a 
state of nature, without any local jurisprudence or organized ad- 
ministration of justice. But the county of Kentucky, cotermin- 
ous with our state, having been established about the close of the 



11 

year 1776, early in 1777 the new county was organized and a 
court of Quarter Sessions was opened in March, at Harrodsburgh. 
And of that first Kentucky court of justice, Levi Todd was the 
first clerk. 

As the Revolutionary war was raging, and no law had been 
passed for the appropriation of land on this side of the mountains, 
the settlement of this country did not increase very rapidly before 
the year 1779, when ^Hhe land law" was enacted. Having al- 
ways asserted full dominion over all the territory within her char- 
tered limits, conceding to the savage occupants the usufruct mere- 
ly, Virginia declared illegal and void the purchase by Col. Hender- 
son, and another also by Col. Donaldson, from the Six Nations, of 
the territory north of the Kentucky river, all of which was claim- 
ed by those tribes. But, considering those purchases valid for the 
purpose of divesting the aboriginal title, our parent state claimed 
the absolute right to the entire territory as a trust resulting to her 
from the illegal contracts, which were deemed void so far only as 
they purported to vest beneficial interests in the individual purcha- 
sers who had made contracts with Indians in violation of a statute 
prohibiting all such purchases. Thus claiming the use of the land, 
as well as jurisdiction over it, the Legislature, in 1779, enacted a 
statute, commonly called "the land law," authorizing, in prescribed 
modes, individual appropriations of land in Kentucky. This be- 
neficent enactment brought to this country, during the fall and 
winter of that year, an unexampled tide of immigrants, who, ex- 
changing all the comforts of their native society and homes, for 
settlements for themselves and children here, came like pilgrims 
to a wilderness to be made secure by their arms and habitable by 
the toil of their lives. Through privations incredible and perils 
thick, thousands of men, women, and children, came in success- 
ive caravans forming continuous streams of human beings, horses, 
cattle, and other domestic animals, all moving onward along a 
"lonely and houseless path to a wild and cheerless land. Cast your 
eyes back on that long procession of missionaries in the cause of 
civilization. Behold the men on foot, with their trusty guns on 
their shoulders, driving stock and leading packhorses — and the wo- 
men, some walking with pails on their heads, others riding with 
children in their laps and other children swung in baskets on hor- 
ses fastened to the tails of others going before. See them en- 
camped at night expecting to be massacred by Indians — behold 



12 

them, in the month of December, in that ever memorable season 
of unprecedented cold, called '•^ the hard zonz/er," travelling two 
and three miles a day, frequently in danger of being frozen or 
killed by the falling of horses on the icy and almost impassable 
trace, and subsisting only on stinted allowances of stale bread and 
meat ; but now, lastly, look at them as they reach the destined 
fort, perhaps on the eve of merry Christmas, met by the hearty 
welcome of friends who had come before, and cheered with fresh 
buflalo meat and parched corn, they rejoice at their deliverance, 
and resolve to be contented with their lots. 

This is no vision of the imagination. It is but an imperfect 
description of the pilgrimage of my own father and mother, and 
of many others, who settled in Kentucky in December, 1779. 
When, resting from their journey, they looked at the cheerless 
home of their choice and remembered, with sighs, the kindred and 
comforts left behind in the sunny land of their youth — they were 
yet consoled by trust in the martyr's God, and animated by the 
rainbow of hope which gilded the dark firmament lowering over 
the unchincked cabins which scarcely sheltered their heads. Blest 
be the memory of the patriarchal band ; blest forever be the land 
ennobled by their virtues and consecrated by their blood ; and 
blest be their children and their children's children, both in this 
life and in that to come. 

The land law provided — that all persons who had settled them- 
selves or others in the country in good faith antecedently to the 
1st of January, 1778, should be entitled to 400 acres including 
each settlement, at the price of $2 50 for each hundred acres ; 
that all who, in like manner, had settled in villages should be en- 
titled, collectively, to 640 acres for their town, and individually 
to 400 acres each at the same price of $2 50 for each hundred 
acres ; that such as had settled since the 1st of January, 177S, 
should be entitled to a pre-emption of 400 acres including each 
settlement on paying for each hundred acres £40 in paper money, 
then equal to about $40; that such as had, before the 1st of Jan- 
uary, 1778, chosen any vacant land and marked it or built a house 
or made any other improvement on it, should be entitled, for the 
same price of £40 per hundred, to a pre-emption of 1,000 acres 
for each improvement; that, to every settlement right a pre- 
emptive right to an additional 1,000 acres, at the government 
price of £40 in paper money for each hundred acres, should be 



13 

attached so as to adjoin the settlement survey; and tluit, inde- 
pendently of any pre-emption claim, any person might procure a 
treasury warrant for any quantity at the said State price, to be 
located by his own direction. 

Settlement and village claims were to be adjusted by commis- 
sioners appointed by Virginia, whose first session was on the 13th 
of October, 1779, at Logan's Station, near the present village of 
Stanford, and whose first certificate of title, dated the next day, 
was granted to Isaac Slielhy, (the first Governor of Kentuckv) for 
"a settlement and pre-emption, of 1,400 acres, for raising corn 
in 1776 " near the Knob Lick, about five miles south of Danville, 
where he afterwards resided and died. 

The settlement of Kentucky was not the only aim of the land 
law of 1779. Unfortunately for the repose of the first settlers. 
Revenue was Virginia's principal object. She issued warrants 
for more land than she had, and the best lands were covered by 
successive appropriations. This was the fault of the law, which 
not only permitted each claimant to make his own entry, but re- 
quired each location to be made with so much precision as to en- 
able subsequent locators to appropriate, without collision, the ad- 
jacent residuum. This last provision was judicially construed as 
requiring notoriety, actual or potential, in the locative calls, and 
an identity between the entry, survey, and patent. Unluckily, 
the courts decided also that an older grantee might be compelled, 
by a court of equity, to relinquish his legal title to a junior claim- 
ant under the better entry ; and that a subsequent locator, whose 
entry was constructively certain and good, should be preferred to 
a prior locator whose entry did not possess, at its date, the pre- 
scribed notoriety or requisite identity, even though the subse- 
quent appropriator knew, or might, by reasonable enquiry, have 
known, when he made his entry, that he was encroaching on a 
prior appropriation. 

These anomalous rules and doctrines operated unjustly to indi- 
viduals and injuriously to the prosperity and peace of Kentucky. 
They produced vexatious and protracted litigation involving, for 
many years, most of the original titles — and that litigation gener- 
ally resulted to the loss, and often the I'uin, of the earlier appro- 
priators, who had neither the craft nor the foresight necessary for 
eluding the legal net woven by avaricious or unskilful legislators, 
cunning lawyers, and metaphysical courts. Many, perhaps most, 



14 

of the advanced guard who rescued the country, were supplanted 
by voracious speculators. 

Boone was one of the most conspicuous of these victims. Of 
the many tracts of rich land for which he had obtained titles, it is 
not certainly known that he was permitted to hold one foot. 
Like Moies, he led the pilgrim army — and, like him, he saw but 
never enjoyed the promised land. 

The Indian tribes, who had claimed the territory as their own, 
denying the validity of the contracts purporting to cede their 
titles to Henderson and Donaldson — and many other tribes — of 
which the Shawanees were the most ferocious — claiming it as 
common hunting ground — these combined savages determined to 
prevent the occupation of it by " the long knife," as they charac- 
terized the white men; and, by persevering massacres of the early 
immigrants on their way to the country and after others had 
reached it, they endeavored to nip the settlement in its bud. This 
savage crusade against civilization was prosecuted in the settle- 
ments of Kentucky until after Clark's campaign, in 1782, and on 
the borders of the Ohio until Wayne's treaty at Greenville, in 
1795. Prior to the treaty of Independence in 1783, neither the 
confederation nor any of the States contributed any efficient aid 
to the spartan band of isolated pioneers who encountered alone 
all the horrors of exterminating war with numerous tribes of sav- 
ages. In that bloody struggle even the children were soldiers and 
the women all heroines. The husband, with his rifle, had to 
guard his wife whilst she milked their cow; and the lonely mo- 
ther and her children often defended their cabin against unsparing 
assaults at night. Day after day, and night after night, families 
were surprised and slaughtered — companies of immigrants massa- 
cred — stations attacked — bloody battles fought — and captives ta- 
ken and either rescued, or butchered, or burned at the stake. 

The horrible massacres at Martin's and Kincheloe's Stations — 
" the defeated camps," where a large company of men, women, 
and children, were nearly all slaughtered in their tents on the 
wilderness trace, in 1781 ; and when, in the darkness and chil- 
ling rain to which a fugitive mother had escaped undressed, a child 
was born whom many of us knew in manhood's prime : — the as- 
sault on the cabin of Mrs. Woods, near the Crab Orchard, in 
1782 — the bloody rencounter between an Indian, who had forced 
an entrance, and her negro man — the attempts of other Indians 



15 

to cut down her door — their repulse by her pointing through a 
crack a gun barrel used as a poker — and her finally cutting off the 
Indian's head with a broadax, whilst he and her slave were lying 
side by side fighting on the floor : — the capture of Miss Calloway 
and Miss Boone, at Boonsborough, in 1776 — the pursuit by their 
parents, one of whom (Boone) subscribed an oath that he would 
rescue the children, if alive, or die in the effort — the instinctive 
sagacity of the captives in leaving shreds of their handkerchiefs 
and dresses as signals of their course and of the encouraging fact 
that they still lived — the anxiety of the pursuing fathers when, 
surveying the camp of the sleeping captors, they beheld their 
daughters lyins; arm in arm — the solicitude of those children 
when, shortly afterwards, they saw their fathers themselves hope- 
less prisoners, tied to trees, facing tomahawks uplifted to slay 
them — and the mutual joy of parents and children when, at that 
aAvful moment, a fire from friends who had followed in the pur- 
suit dispersed the savages and rescued the captives who were soon 
in each other's arms weeping with pious joy for their providen- 
tial deliverance: — The capture of Simon Kenton, and his rescue 
from the fire of the stake by the renegado, Simon Girty, who, 
hating his race, had become a leader of Indians, and more cruel 
than any of them, yet, in this instance, illustrated the triumphant 
strength of schoolboy associations; for he and Kenton had played 
together when they were boys, and, recognizing the familiar face 
just as the incendiary was igniting the funeral pile of faggots, he 
instinctively cried stop! — and the bloody hand was stayed: — The 
attack, by more than one hundred Indians, on Capt. Hubbal's boat 
as it descended the Ohio with his family — his chivalrous defence 
until the blood gushed over the tops of his boots, and his success- 
ful resistance even then, and final victory by repelling the assail- 
ants with billets of wood until, coming in sight of Limestone, they 
ceased their efforts to board with their canoes and paddled off, 
leaving the noble immigrant and his blood-stained boat to float 
alone, a monument of valor never surpassed: — The many captures 
of women and children — the burning of infants or the crushing of 
their heads against trees in the presence of their mothers — the 
detention in savage bondage of men, women, and children for 
years — and the burning of many at the stake, ornamented with 
the scalps of their friends: — These were some of the scenes of 
peril and blood which characterized the first settlement of Ken- 
tucky by our race. 



16 

Battles too were fought as gloriously as those of Thermopyle 
and the Grampian Hills. Who does not remember, with honest 
pride, the traditions of the heroic and successful defence of Boons- 
borough, and Harrodsburgh, and of Logan's and Bryant's Stations? 
And where is the hearl^ that does not glow with admiration at the 
recital t)f the romantic incidents which signalized these and many 
other as memorable occasions in our short but eventful history? 
One only may illustrate the spirit of all of them. Nearly 400 
Indians, lying concealed around Logan's Station, surprised and 
shot down one of its few defenders who, at the dawn of day, had 
passed the puncheon stockade in quest of the cows — and then, 
with savar^e yells, they attacked the fort; while pouring their 
rifle balls like hail upon the humble fortress, the wounded man, 
between two fires, raised himself on his hands and knees, but, 
unable to stand, he could not escape. Col. Benjamin Logan, ob- 
serving this imploring scene, exclaimed — "boys who will go and 
help our wounded friend?" Several made the attempt, but were 
driven back by the enemy's balls; at last Logan himself nobly 
ran to his relief and, lifting him on his shoulders, carried him safe- 
ly in untouched by one of the hundreds of bullets aimed at their 
heads. 

'^ EsiilVs defeat,^^ near Mountsterling, on the 20th of March, 
1782, was as glorious as disastrous. More skill and courage were 
never displayed on a battle field than Capt. Estill and his associ- 
ates that day exhibited and sealed with the blood of all and the 
lives of the leader and many of his men. At the time of that ever 
memorable battle, " EstiWs Station" was occupied and to be de- 
fended by women and children, and my own father, who was 
then lying there disabled by severe wounds received from Indi- 
ans a few days before. 

And in " the Blue Lick defeat," August the 20th, I7S2, the 
cormorant of death fed greedily on the flower of the first settle- 
ment. On that darkest of their gloomy days every settler lost a 
friend, and nearly every family a prop. And, on that bloody 
field, the noble Cols. Todd and Trigg, the chivalrous Capt. Harlan* 
and the gallant son of Boone, lay undistinguished among ihe pro- 
miscuous slain, all soon mangled by devouring wolves and vultures 
so as not to be recognized by their friends who, three days after 
the battle, buried the fragments. A few of their crumbling bones, 
since collected by their countrymen, now lie exposed to the ele- 



17 

ments, in a confused pile, on the summit of the bleak and rocky 
plain where the heroes fell. We cannot now imagine the grief 
and despondence with which the mournful intelligence of that day's 
catastrophe covered the land. But the survivors, though wofully 
bereaved, were not to be discouraged or dismayed. They were 
resolved never to look back or faulter in their first and last resolve 
to conquer the wilderness or die in the attempt. IsraeVs God 
stood by and sustained the noble but forlorn band — for their cause 
was his. On the long roll of that day's reported slain were the 
names of a few who had, in fact, been captured and, after surviv- 
ing the ordeal of the gauntlet, had been permitted to live as 
captives. Among these was an excellent husband and father 
who, with eleven other captives, had been taken by a tribe paint- 
ed black as the signal of torture and death to all. The night af- 
ter the battle, these twelve prisoners were stripped and placed in 
a line on a log — he to whom we have specially alluded being at 
one extremity of the devoted row. The cruel captors, then be- 
ginning at the other end, slaughtered eleven, one by one ; but, 
when they came to the only survivor, though they raised him up 
also and drew their bloody knives to strike under each uplifted 
arm, they paused and, after a long pow-wow, spared his life — 
why, he never knew. For about a year none of his friends, ex- 
cepting his faithful wife, doubted his death. She, hoping against 
reason, still insisted that he lived and would yet return to her. 
Wooed by another, she, from time to time, postponed the nup- 
tials, declaring that she could not divest herself of the belief that 
her husband survived. Her expostulating friends finally succeed- 
ing in their efforts to stifle her affectionate instinct, she reluctant- 
ly yielded, and the nuptial day was fixed. But just before it 
dawned the crack of a rifle was heard near her lonely cabin — at 
the familiar sound, she leaped out, like a liberated fawn, ejacula- 
ting as she sprang — " thaVs John's gun! " It was John's gun sure 
enough ; and, in an instant, she was, once more, in her lost hus- 
band's arms. But, nine years afterwards, that same husband fell 
in "St. Clair's defeat" — and the same disappointed, but persever- 
ing, lover renewed his suit — and, at last, the widow became his 
wife. The scene of those romantic incidents was within gunshot 
of my natal homestead ; and with that noble wife and matron I 
was myself well acquainted. 

3 



18 

Almost every spot of earth within the limits of our State lias 
been consecrated by some romantic adventure or personal trage- 
dy; and were I to speak of these remarkable incidents of our 
early history until this day's setting sun, I could scarcely have be- 
gun the moving tale of Kentucky's first settlement by those whose 
blood still flows through our ov/n hearts. The few facts we have 
briefly recited are but a sample of countless events equally inter- 
esting and far above the power of adequate description by the pen 
or tongue of man. 

But peril, privation and death, could neither extirpate the set- 
tlement nor prevent its progressive increase. And, in 1783, two 
auspicious events occurred — the treaty of peace with England, 
and the subdivision of Kentucky county into the counties of Lin- 
coln, Fayette and Jefferson, and the organization of a District 
court with criminal as well as civil jurisdiction. Of that first local 
court of general jurisdiction, John Floyd and Samuel McDowell 
were the first Judges, John May the first Clerk, and Walker 
Daniel the first prosecuting attorney. Its first session was at 
Harrodsburgh, March the 3d, 17S3 ; but it was permanently fixed 
at Danville by a contract with the Clerk and Attorney General, 
the proprietors of the land, who agreed to erect, of logs, the pub- 
lic buildings. 

As early as 1784, the population had become so confident of 
its capacity to govern and defend itself, as to desire a separation 
from Virginia ; and, in that year, a Convention was held at Dan- 
ville preparatory to the establishment of an independent govern- 
ment. But a disagreement with the parent State as to the terms 
of separation frustrated the object of that and other successive 
conventions, until Virginia having, in 1789, assented on prescribed 
terms ratified by a Convention at Danville in 1790, Congress 
passed an act, February the 4th, 1791, admitting Kentucky into 
the Union prospectively, on the 1st of June, 1792. And, on the 
I9th of April, 1792 — the Vlth anniversary of the battle of Lexing- 
ton — the first Constitution of Kentucky was adopted. Isaac Shel- 
by, the first Governor, arrived in Lexington (the temporary seat 
of government) June the 4th, 1792, and a quorum of the Legisla- 
ture, there convened on the 5th, having elected Alexander S. Bul- 
lit President of the Senate, and Robert Breckinridge Speaker of 
the House of Representatives, received the first Executive com- 



19 

munication, read to them in joint meeting by the Governor in 
person, in imitation of the practice of Washington, as President 
of the United States. 

It was perhaps lucky that Kentucky was kept in a state of pu- 
pilage and dependence until after the adoption of the Federal 
Constitution. Her own constitution is probably much better 
than it would have been had she adopted one before 1788. Her 
detached position — the non-surrender of the Northwestern posts, 
as stipulated by the treaty of 1783, in consequence of which 
the Indians were instigated to persevering hostilities — the occlu- 
sion by Spain of the Mississippi river below the 31st degree of 
latitude — and a general, but unjust suspicion, that the federal 
government was inattentive, perhaps indifferent to Western in- 
terests — had generated a spirit of distrust and disaffection which 
might possibly have been exasperated to the extremity of final 
alienation had Kentucky, as an independent state, possessed the 
power to act as she might have willed, before she was covered bv 
the panoply of the National Union of 1788. But rescued, either 
by Virginia or her own good sense, from the vortex of absolute 
self-dependence or foreign alliance, she now stands a Doric column 
in the American temple of Union. Although she was not, in 
fact, an integral member of the Union quite as soon as Ver- 
mont, yet, as the act of Congress prospectively admitting her, 
without quaUfication or restriction except as to time, was the first 
of the kind enacted by Congress, we claim for our own native 
Commonwealth the honor of primogeniture. And may she long 
continue to enjoy and deserve her birthright, and be the last to 
soil or surrender the blessed national motto of her own flag — 
"UNITED, WE STAND— DIVIDED, WE FALL." 

The adoption of a political constitution, and such a constitu- 
tion, in the wilds of Kentucky by the free will of a majority of its 
free inhabitants, was a novel and interesting spectacle. The first 
constitution, the production principally of George Nicholas, was a 
very good one — certainly equal, if not superior, to any other State 
Constitution then existing. As it provided for another convention 
at the end of seven years, a new constitution was adopted in 
1799. Both constitutions were alike — in outline the same. The 
last is more popular in its provision for the election of Governor, 
and less so in the mode of selecting sheriffs and clerks ; and the 



20 

first secured more stability to the judiciary by prohibiting, hke 
the federal constitution, any reduction of salary during the tenure 
of judicial office. There may be reason to doubt whether, alto- 
gether, the last is better than the first. But the fundamental law 
of Kentucky, as it is, recognizes the cardinal principles of the 
declaration of independence of July the 4th, 1776 — distributes all 
political power among their co-ordinate departments of represent- 
ative magistracy — divides the legislative council, intending one 
branch to operate, when proper, as a check on the passion or in- 
considerateness of the other — secures the elective franchise to all 
free, white, male citizens twenty one years old — and provides a 
strong anchorage of stability in prescribing, as the only lawful 
mode of revocation or alteration, such an one as secures the dis- 
passionate exercise of reason by a greater number of citizens 
than that which will ever vote on the grave question of a new 
convention. Kentucky pioneers seem to have well understood — 
what the wise men of antiquity and even of modern Europe never 
knew — the conservative principles of safe, just, and practicable 
democracy. Our State Constitution is an organized model of 
those principles. The ultimate object of the entire structure was 
to secure fundamental rights, not to the numerical majority who, 
but seldom, if ever, can need such extraneous support, but to the 
minority and each individual against the passions or injustice of 
the major party — to assure the predominance of reason over pas- 
sion, knowledge over ignorance, and moral over brute force; to 
prevent a mischievous prevalence of factious designs and of hasty 
or inconsiderate public opinion ; in fine, to secure the blessings of 
democracy, unalloyed with its curses, by organizing political 
sovereignty in such a manner as to deprive each citizen of so 
much of natural liberty as would be inconsistent with the practical 
supremacy of just and equal laws, and, at the same time, secure to 
each, against the governing party, as much of natural right as it 
can be the end of the best State government to guarantee. In 
every breath it repudiates the suicidal doctrine that the will of 
the actual majority — unsanctioned by the constitution or express- 
ed otherwise than that requires — is law, or should be respected as 
a rule of conduct, or of right. And, in organizing the represent- 
ative principle, it was the great aim of our fathers to secure to 
legislation a degree of responsibility, deliberation, and knowledge, 



21 

which the constituent mass, under the most favorable circumstan- 
ces, could never bs expected to embody. And in this way they in- 
tended to make legislation the safe work of reason and delibera- 
tion, and not the monstrous offspring of the passions or inconside- 
rate emotions of an impatient or irresponsible multitude. Thus 
only can " vox popidi" be " vox dei.^^ 

Though complex in structure, yet, in its practical operation, 
according to its true theory, this constitution exhibits an admira- 
ble simplicity and rare wisdom. And its wonderful philosophy 
and beauty appear in this pervading characteristic — that, whilst 
it recognizes the ultimate authority of the popular will, it intends 
that the representative functionaries in each department of sove- 
reign power, and especially in two of them, shall, by faithfully 
acting according to their own honest and enlightened judgments, 
arrest the tide of passion or ignorance until the constituent body 
shall have had sufficient time for thorough investigation and dis- 
passionate conclusions, but that, after the public mind shall have 
been thus distilled through the constitutional ordeal, and not be- 
fore, its final judgment should be deemed the highest attainable 
evidence of right, and should, of course, then be supreme. This 
is the principle and the end of the entire frame and all its checks. 

This theory, if observed in practice, will exalt representative 
democracy; any other must always, as hitherto, prostitute and 
degrade it. A constitution less guarded or more democratic than 
that of Kentucky would authorize licentiousness and tend to an- 
archy, the most oppressive despotism, and the ultimate destruction 
of democracy itself. Let our public functionaries all feel the true 
spirit of our constitution and of their stations, and always act 
upon a comprehensive and elevated consideration of their respon- 
sibility to the whole constituency on whom their acts will ope- 
rate, and to their own deliberate judgments, and to God — and, as 
long as they shall thus fill their places and discharge their duties, 
and no longer, our ark of liberty may save us all from every storm 
and every Hood. One of its best features is that which secures its 
own stability. Without this, it would not effectually operate as 
a supreme law ; for, if the majority could abolish or change it at 
pleasure, it would be no more inviolable or fundamental than an 
act of ordinary legislation. Our fathers, wise and prudent, were 
not willing to trust all their or our rights to the will of a majority 



without imposing on that majority itself such restrictions as would 
afford a satisfactory guaranty against a capricious or unjust 
abuse of power. Such is the organic law made for themselves 
and their posterity. Honest men made it, and it may last and 
bless as long as men equally honest minister at its altars, in its 
own pure spirit. But it is a chart of one only of a constellation 
of republics, each revolving in its own orbit round a common 
centre, and altogether constituting, for all purposes common to all, 
one pervading, comprehensive, supreme Commonwealth. A con- 
federation of independent sovereigns is not the union into which 
Kentucky was admitted as a member. Her union is national to 
the extent of all national interests, and federal only so far as her 
own local interests are exclusively involved. She arrogates no 
authority, as a State, to control rights or interests common to 
her co-states, nor does she admit the authority of any of them 
to decide for heron any right or interest of hers. As to all 
national concerns, whether foreign or domestic — all things es- 
sential to the maintainance of the harmony, justice, and in- 
tegrity of the Union, to its nationality and ultimate national 
supremacy — she had, by the act of becoming a party to the Con- 
stitution of the United States, wisely surrendered all her sove- 
reignty to the common government, instituted for the sole pur- 
pose of preserving that sacred Union by regulating and controll- 
ing all those great interests which no one State could regulate or 
control consistently with the rights of others. It was in the cause 
of that union that Kentucky has often raised her arm and shed 
her blood — and to preserve it in its purity and original design 
will she not, if ever necessary, spill the last drop that animates her 
patriotic heart? " Yes," is the response of those nodding plumes. 

Such is the constitution and such are the principles handed 
down to us by the generation that is gone or fast going away. 
The spirits of the dead and the prayers of the yet living conjure 
us to defend them. 

The power and value of our local constitution have been se- 
verely tried ; and never more signally than in the violent contro- 
versies about a "new election" of Governor in 1816-17 — and 
"relief" and " new court" from 1822 to 1827 — each of which 
a""itated our State almost to civil convulsion, and in both of which 
the sober intelligence of the people finally prevailed over the ear- 



23 

lier impulses of passion and the promptings of parlizan leaders, 
which, had they not been checked in the first case by a firm and 
honest Senate, and in the last by a pure and enlightened judi- 
ciary, would, as almost all now admit, have trampled under the 
feet of an excited majority some of the most important provisions 
of the organic law. Our Senators and Supreme Judges then 
firmly and nobly performed the task allotted to them by the 
constitution, by faithfully doing what their departments were 
organized to effect. They did not follow the too contagious ex- 
ample of illustrious demagogues by stifling their own consciences, 
prostituting their own judgments, and committing treason to the 
constitution and their stations, in subservience to the passions and 
submission to the clamor of the unreflecting multitude. They 
saved the constitution and commended the cause of constitutional 
democracy. Any other course by such functionaries must always 
tend to unhinge the constitution — to destroy its stability — to per- 
vert its spirit — and finally, to subvert democracy itself. 

Our legislation has generally been consistent with our constitu- 
tion and promotiv^e of the public welfare. But the besetting sin of 
partial enactments, and of hasty, crude, and excessive legislation, 
has sometimes stained our legislative history; and in no class of 
cases more frequently than that of Divorces of husband and wife, 
in which, since 1805, but never before, our legislatures have, in 
many cases, seemed to assume the judicial function granted ex- 
clusively to the judiciary by the most important provision of the 
constitution. 

But, under her State Constitution, essentially as it is, Kentucky 
has already grown to a matured and distinguished Republic — 
matured in Knowledge, in social organization, and in physical im- 
provement — and distinguished for lofty patriotism and eminent 
talents in peace and in war. Her arm never hesitated — her voice 
never faultered ip. the cause of constitutional liberty and union. 
She has often sealed her patriotism with her richest blood. By 
the victory of Orleans Kentuckians gloriously contributed to im- 
mortalize Kentucky valor and their federal leader's name — and 
by their gallant support of the lamented Harrison in the North- 
western campaigns of the last war, they made him, too, President 
of the United States. How many more Presidents she may give 
to the nation, from her own bosom, time alone can disclose. Al- 



ready two of her sons are enrolled among the distinguished few 
from whom the approaching choice is to be made : and she has 
many more who are qualified for the same distinction. By her 
principles, her conduct, and her high moral power, Kentucky, 
though only fifty one years old, has acquired an exalted and 
priceless character, and, having contributed to the population and 
strength of other and younger Commonwealths, is now^ honored 
by the significant title of " OLD KAINTUCK." Her blood is 
good. The richest of this noble blood flowed in the veins of our 
untitled pioneers, than whom a more heroic, hardy, and honest 
race of men and women never gave birth and fortune to any na- 
tion on earth. As to this world's trash they were poor enough ; 
thiy had no blazoned heraldry, and but little of scholastic lore. 
But they were blessed with robust health, sound heads, and pure 
hearts — practical sense, simple and industrious habits, dauntless 
courage, social equality, virtuous education, and habitual rever- 
ence for human and divine law. These were the elements of our 
first social organization and civil state. Better never existed. 
What a generation was Kentucky's first ! Who could be so false- 
ly proud as to be ashamed of such an ancestry? Who among us 
would prefer to trace his pedigree to a nobler stock ? To that 
primitive race — to that "rooif out of dry ground'''' — are we in- 
debted, not only for our present comforts, but for all those quali- 
ties which have most honorably distinguished the nameof"Ken- 
tuckian." Let us never prove ourselves unworthy of our origin. 
Most of the pilgrim band who made the first footsteps of civili- 
zation on our virgin soil, have consecrated by their bones the 
land of their choice. Many of them lived long enough to enjoy 
the first fruits of their toils — a few — but very few — survivors yet 
linger here and there anions; us as monuments of the memorable 
age that is past, and of the noble race that is almost gone. This 
venerable group deserves a passing tribute. 

SURVIVING FATHERS AND MOTHERS OF KEN-' 
TUCKY'S DAWN! — we salute you as the honored relics of 
eventful days to our country and to us which we, your posterity, 
never saw. Yet spared by Providence to commemorate the adven- 
tures of the hey-day of your youth, may you still be permitted to 
gleam forth, yet a little while longer, the light of tlie generation now 
gone before you, and also to bltss the children who may live after 
vou. 



25 

You feel this day what none but you can feel. You saw Ken- 
tucky in her native wildness. You well remember the many- 
fold difficulties you met and overcame. You remember the 
friends you have lost and the children you have buried. You now 
review the scenes of your dark and bloody days — ^look around 
for the companions of your sufferings and triumphs, and sigh that 
they are gone and you alone here. But you live to reap the rich 
harvest sowed by your sweat and your blood. You behold Ken- 
tucky as she is now before the middle of the nineteenth century 
and contrast her with what she was in the last quarter of the 
eighteenth. Full of years and full of honor, you bless God for 
what you have been and all you have suffered and seen. May 
you still be permitted to live until you can know that the fruits of 
your lives will long bless the country and the children you must 
soon leave behind. And then, in the light of that bright assur- 
ance, may each of you, as your last earthly moment approaches, 
be able to say from the heart — " now Lord lettest thou thy ser- 
vant depart in peace — for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." 

But among you here is one — the lonely trunk of four genera- 
tions — to whom the heart of filial gratitude and love must speak 
out one emotion to-day — Venerable and beloved MOTHER! How 
often have we heard from your maternal lips the story of Ken- 
tucky's romantic birth — oi^^the hard winter of '79" — of all the 
achievements and horrors of those soul-rending days? 

You have known this land in all its phases. You have suf- 
fered with those that suffered most, and sympathised with those 
who have rejoiced in well-doing and the prospect before them. 
You have long survived the husband, who came with you 
and stood by you in your gloomiest, as well as your brightest 
days, and has long slept with buried children of your love. — 
And now, the sole survivor of a large circle of cotemporane- 
ous kindred and juvenile friends — a solitary stock o[ three hun- 
dred shoots — with a mind scarcely impaired, you yet linger with 
us on earth only to thank Providence for his bounties and pray 
for the prosperity of your flock and the welfare of the land you 
helped to save and to bless. And when it shall, at last, be 
your lot to exchange this Canaan below for the better Canaan 
above, may you, on the great day of days, at the head of your 
4 



26 

long line of posterity and in presence of the assenibled universe, 
be able, with holy joy, to announce the glad tidings — "Here Lord 
are we and all the children thou hast ever given us." 

But the ashes of many of the first settlers of Kentucky are scat- 
tered, my countrymen, in foreign lands. And those of the first 
Hunter, who named many of her rivers and creeks, lie undistin- 
guished on the banks of the turbid Missouri whither he had re- 
moved as soon as Kentucky could stand alone, and where he died 
in 1820, with his old rifle by his side. 

Yet though our favored land is not honored as the repository 
of the earthly remains of Daniel Boone, it was loved by him to the 
last. After exploring the richest portions of the great west in 
the same virgin state he declared that, all in all, there was but 
one Kentucky. That Kentucky, far more advanced in improve- 
ment than even Boone could have anticipated, is now ours. It 
was given to us by our fathers to be enjoyed, and improved, and 
transmitted to our children as an abode of plenty and peace, lib- 
erty and light. 

This is indeed a rich inheritance. A child of the Revolution — 
born in the gloom of a then distant and bloody wilderness — our 
beloved Commonwealth is even now an illustrious monument of 
the wonderful progress of American civilization and of the benefi- 
cence of the American principles of human government, the 67th 
anniversary of whose public announcement to the world we this 
day commemorate. Look at her! — bright as the sun — beautiful 
as the morning — and hopeful as the seasons. Her lap is full — her 
arm strong — her head sound — eloquent her lips, and true her 
heart. Though young in years, she is old in wisdom and ma- 
tured in all that dignifies and adorns a great State. Her policy, 
her arms and her eloquence, have swelled the volume of American 
renown ; her soldiers, and her orators are admired in foreign 
lands : and she has a son, whose eloquence, diplomacy, and states- 
manship are known throughout the civilized world, and who has 
been pre-eminently distinguished among the conscript fathers of 
our own union. Her faith, too, is as untarnished as her prowess 
is undoubted: and now, when ostensible bankruptcy and virtual 
repudiation of solemn obligations are but too fashionable among 
individuals and States, Kentucky has, as she ought, stood firm on 
her integrity, and, Kentuckian-like, her credit is full up to high 
water mark. 



27 

Yet, with all our blessings, there are some among us who com- 
plain of hard times, and appear to be dissatisfied with our self- 
denying policy and the present posture of our local affairs. Let 
them remember that the unsullied character of their State is every 
thing; and that, without this, there can be nothing earthly which 
honorable men could enjoy as they would wish. And let them 
also contrast their condition, whatever it may be, with that of our 
first settlers, and, when they remember that these repined not in 
their pecuhar destitution — even in the hard winter of "'79'' — 
they will surely feel rebuked for their unreflecting ingratitude to 
their noble predecessors and a kind Providence for their own com- 
paratively enviable allotments. 

But gratitude to our adventurous fathers and mothers, as well 
as duty to ourselves and posterity, demands that we should main- 
tain and improve the blessings, physical, social, and civil, which 
we have inherited. The physical improvement of our State, great 
as it has been, is but just begun. We must persevere in prudent 
improvements for developing our latent resources, facilitating our 
intercourse, increasing our population, augmenting our wealth, 
and thus still adding to our local comforts and attractions. 

It is our sacred duty to all the friends of liberty and equality, 
dead, living, or yet to be born, to maintain inviolate the suprema- 
cy of law, and especially fundamental law — and, as indispensable 
to this end, we must uphold that political and social organization 
which will afford the greatest security against the popular vices 
and passions which will aflSiict the Commonwealth even in its best 
estate. And must we not, as hitherto, resolutely maintain the 
union of the States, and, as indispensable to that end, the suprem- 
acy of national authority over national affairs? Will Kentucky 
ever be guilty of the suicidal act of rupturing the vital Siamese 
artery which unites our 26 States, as one in blood and destiny? 
One and all Kentuckians answer no — NEVER: — Ohio echoes 
*' never; " — and " never " is reverberated from the Alleghany to the 
Rocky Mountains. 

Our character and institutions can be maintained only by the 
virtues that produced them. It is moral power that makes a 
State free and truly great. It is this to which we are indebted 
for the glory and prosperity of Kentucky. Do we intend to pre- 



28 

serve and increase those national treasures? Then we must pre- 
serve and increase the stock of moral power left us by the gene- 
ration we are succeeding. Industry, public spirit, intelligence, 
simplicity of manners, charity, self-denial, and social equality, are 
the elements of this conservative and ennobling power. And, 
instead of improvement, is there not danger of deterioration in 
all these particulars? We have more refinement, and luxury, 
and literature, but are we equal to our fathers and mothers in the 
sound and sturdy qualities that made Kentucky what she has 
been? Are there not general symptoms of physical degeneracy? 
May not the rising generation be the victims of a false pride and 
pernicious education, already too prevalent? We must correct 
the procedure. If we desire the honor, happiness, or health of 
our children, the reputation of our State, or the preservation of 
its civil liberty, we must change our systems of physical and moral 
education. Sound constitution, vigorous health, industrious hab- 
its, pure and fixed moral principles, and that sort of practical sa- 
gacity and rectitude which these produce, constitute the best of 
all human legacies. Without these blessings ancestral wealth 
or honor will generally curse rather than bless its unqualified re- 
cipient. With the wise and virtuous, the moral virtues that dig- 
nify and the rational graces that most adorn our nature are the 
tests of merit and the only passports to favor. Let us then be 
careful to imprint on the hearts of our children the cheering re- 
publican truth — 

"The rank is but the Guina stamp, 
The marCs the Gou'd for all that." 

Every child in the Commonwealth should be educated in such a 
manner as to enable them all to be good and useful citizens. This 
is not benevolence merely, but obvious policy. In a free State, 
where the majority govern, what social organization or code of 
human laws can secure the rights of all or of any unless the gov- 
erning mass be intelligent and moral ? And would not the rich 
lose more by the ignorance and vices of the undisciplined poor 
than the cost of any prudent system of universal enlightenment 
and amelioration? It is the interest of each and of all that every 
one should be acquainted with the elements of the useful arts and 
of natural, moral, and political science. 



29 

But of all laws, that of the heart is tlie most supreme among 
men; and the. finger of God can alone effectually inscribe that 
law on the tablet of the mind. This is the only unfailing prop of 
just and secure democracy. But it is not the metaphysics of schools, 
nor the polemics of dogmatists, nor the belligerent theologies of 
sects, which exalt or save a State. It is the religion of the heart 
— pure, simple, and god-like — that Christian religion, which 
subdues bad passions, eradicates vicious propensities, and infuses 
humility, self-denial, and universal benevolence. This it is which 
equalizes and renovates social man and effectually guards all his 
rights, personal and political. Wherever it prevails liberty and 
peace abound : whenever it is absent or is mocked by scepticism 
or hypocrisy, anarchy and despotism must, sooner or later, be 
the people's doom. 

Could the whole pioneer band, living and dead, now bless their 
own Kentucky by one valedictory counsel, they Avould, all with 
one voice, say to her — "Educate your children — all — all — and be 
" sure to teach them right. On this hangs the destiny of Ken- 
" tucky, and, perhaps, that also of the American Union." 

The last remnant of our sacred band of pioneers and that also 
of our revolutionary soldiers and statesmen is now, with trembling 
step, descending the final slope of their earthly pilgrimage to sleep 
with the compatriot friends who have gone before them : and 
soon, very soon, not one will be left behind to tell the story of 
their eventful lives or behold on earth the beautiful country bles- 
sed by their noble virtues and commended to Heaven by their 
dying prayers. But shall they ever die in the heart of Kentucky? 
When the last of the Patriarchs shall have returned to the dust, 
we may rear to their memory a towering pyramid of earth, on 
whose lofty summit the bald eagle may build its nest and hatch 
birds of liberty for ages — and that majestic mausoleum, pointing 
to the skies, may, centuries hence, sublimely stand alone the his- 
toric monument of our heroic age and heroic race. But is it not 
due to the memory of the past, as well as to the enjoyment of the 
present and the hopes of the future, to signalize our own wonder- 
ful age by other and more useful memorials which may attest, to 
succeeding generations, our own title to the gratitude of our pos- 
terity and our kind? Is it not our duty to our fathers, and to 



30 

ourselves, and to our children, and to all mankind, to preserve in- 
violate and to improve the rich deposite of moral and political 
truth and of moral and political organization left with us in trust 
for ourselves and our fellow men of every clime and of every suc- 
ceeding age? And can this sacred duty be performed without 
maintaining the principles and practising the self-denying virtues 
of our glorious ancestors of our country's glorious age? And 
can we safely transmit the blessings of civil and religious liberty 
to our children or commend organized democracy to mankind 
unless, by faithful discipline and rational teaching, physical, moral 
and political, we train up those children in habits of truth, indus- 
try, and morality? If such wholsome discipline be neglected or 
parental authority be perverted by false pride or mistaken indul- 
gence will not the legacy of self-government prove a curse rather 
than a blessing to the unworthy recipients to whom we are so 
anxious to bequeath it? Should we not, therefore, exalt our own 
age and prove ourselves worthy of the manyfold blessings we en- 
joy by cultivating and exemplifying all the social and civic virtues 
of truth, temperance, industry, justice, public spirit, parental fidel- 
ity, and submission to the laws of our country and of God ? And , 
whilst we should ever maintain the integrity and stability of our 
institutions, should we not prudently repair, rectify and improve 
them so far as a wise experience may show that their great end 
requires modification and improvement? Without such occasional 
mfusions of new elements of conservative vitality they might, in 
time, either explode or expire from decay. But if, ^r^o-like, they 
ever require renovation or repair, let them, ^r^o-like, still maintain 
their original identity; for the efficacy of our own fundamental 
laws depends on sentiment, at last. We all know how we love 
the ancient oak that sheltered our infancy, or the old armed chair 
that rocked our mother. Nor can we be unmindful of the fact 
that we feel more veneration for the work of our fathers than for 
that of our own hands; for we see daily exemplifications of the 
latm aphorism—" Vetera extollimus, recentium incuriosL" And 
what is it, so much as antiquity and historic glory, that has, so 
long and so wonderfully, secured the stability and supremacy of 
the old statutes of England which constitute all that is called the 
British constitution? 



31 

But the most glorious and enduring monument which can dis- 
tinguish our age of enjoyment and peace is that which should tes- 
tify that we have been faithful to our children and made them fit, 
in body, in habitude, and in mind, for the enjoyments and the 
works of civil liberty that await their entrance on the great the- 
atre which we must soon leave. 

Thus, and only thus, may we, of this generation, evince our 
gratitude to those of our countrymen who have gone before us, 
and secure the grateful remembrance of those who shall come after 
us. Thus Kentucky may discharge the duties of her seniority and 
local position in this great valley, and show, to her younger sis- 
ters of the west, the only pathv^ray to safe liberty or true renown. 
And thus, too, in the ultimate moral ascendancy of this valley of 
hope that may be destined to teach the world, she may be instru- 
mental in the redemption and regeneration of mankind. All this 
we might perhaps accomplish: — all this, therefore, we should at- 
tempt. Who knows that we might not make Kentucky, morally 
and politically, (as well as physically,) the heart of our Union, 
and thereby also, in time, the heart of the whole earth. Let us 
try. If we fail, yet the honest effort will be honorable. But if 
we succeed, everlasting glory is ours. And even if we or our 
children should be doomed to see the genius of constitutional de- 
mocracy exiled from this land of its birth, we may be consoled by 
the hope that it will take refuge in some more congenial soil and 
propitious age; for what we have already felt and seen under the 
shadow of its wings assures us that its cause is the cause of Hea- 
ven and must finally prevail. 

Whether we look to prophecy, the intimations of natural the- 
ology, or the wonderful events of the last half century, Ave have 
reason to hope that our race is destined to attain on earth a moral 
rectitude and elevation far more general and ennobling than any 
human excellence hitherto exhibited. Even now the progress of 
general amelioration is rapid and pervading. The average career 
of mankind is upward, as well as onward. Christianity, rational 
philosophy, and constitutional liberty, like an ocean of light, are 
rolling their united and resistless tide over the earth and may, ere 
long, cover it as the waters do the great deep. Doubtless there 
may yet be partial revulsions. But the general movement will, 
as we trust, be progressive, until the millennial sun shall rise in 
all the effulgence of universal day. 



32 

For ihat momentous day what shall we have done ? And, when 
it comes, will that star-spangled banner still wave, with all its 
stripes and its stars, undimmed by time, and "E PLURIBUS 
UNUM" still emblazoned on its blue Heavens ? And will that 
hallowed light beam on Kentucky's flag — and will that flag then, 
as now, bear on its folds the national motto — " United we stand, 
divided wefallV^ 

All this may possibly depend on the conduct of this generation. 
Then let us all, here under this metropolitan sky, make, for our- 
selves and our children, a sacramental pledge that we will try to 
promote the final triumph of Lig/ii over Darkness, and of Right 
over Might; and that, so far as, under Providence, the event 
may depend on our conduct, Kentucky's twinned ensign, with its 
moUo unchanged, shall bathe in the rays of millennial sunshine. 

But the fashion of this world, like the shadow of acloud,flitteth 
away. Mutability and decay are inscribed on all things earthly. 
Thebes, and Tyre, and Pahmjra, and Babylon, the downfall of 
empires, and the ruins of the old world, are not the only memori- 
als of this solemn truth. In sepulchral tones it is echoed from 
wastes of time scattered over our own continent. Successive 
generations who, ages ago, inhabited this fair land, have passed 
away and left not a trace of their history or their destiny behind. 
Here and there a mound of earth attests that they once were; — 
but all else concerning them is buried in oblivion. Tradition tells 
not their tale. The signers of our Declaration of Independence, 
and the signers of the Constitution of the United States, are all 
gone to another world. Even the graves of our departed pioneers 
are generally undistinguished and unknown. We tread, daily, 
on their ashes unconscious and unmoved. Already we have em- 
balmed their memories in our nursery tales and begin to look on 
them as the legend heroes of a romantic age obscured by time. 
We ourselves must soon sleep with our fathers, and be to earth 
as if we had never been: — and our children and their children 
will soon follow us and repose with the nations of forgotten dead. 
Our institutions, too, and even this beloved country of ours, and 
all it contains, must perish forever. 

Yet we have hopes that are immortal — interests that are imper- 
ishable — principles that are indestructible. Encouraged by those 
hopes, stimulated by those interests, and sustained by and sustain- 
ing those principles, let us, come what may, be true to God, true 
to ourselves, and faithful to our children, our country, and man- 
kind. And then, whenever or wherever it may be our doom to 
look, for the last time, on earth, we may die justly proud of the 
title of " Keniuckian," and, with our expiring breath, may cordi- 
ally exclaim — Kentucky, as she was: — Kentucky, as she is: — 
Kentucky, as she will be— KENTUCKY FOREVER. 



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